OttawaWatch: We shall all be changed

By Lloyd Mackey

THERE USED to be a sign on the doorway to the child care nursery at Ottawa's Metropolitan Bible Church.

It read: "We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed."

Theresa White recalled seeing that sign, during one of her first visits to The Met, where she and her husband, Lorne, as she puts it, "met Jesus" -- pun intended.

Theresa e-mailed me with that story after reading last week's OttawaWatch, where I talked about The Met's last Sunday at its 72-year-old Bank Street church. The congregation of close to 2,000 has now moved into its new building several kilometres to the south, near the airport.

Lorne and Theresa met each other at the Cornwall Standard Freeholder. She had earned a journalism degree at Carleton University and that was her first reporting job. Lorne had been at the Kelowna Daily Courier and had move east, close to Quebec, where he grew up.

They were married in Ottawa, where Theresa reported for the Citizen and Lorne worked for its then-competitor, the Journal.

One day in 1979, they decided to visit The Met. At the time, they had three of the five children that would eventually form their family.

Theresa recalls: "So many wonderful Met folks took us under their wing . . . such kindness was a culture shock."

It was in contrast to the image that the church had presented to her when she used to wait for the bus to the university, in front of its red brick facade.

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"It was like a fortress. It was something for other people, not for me."

And of course, the care offered for their youngest, then less than a year old, in the church's nursery, was an added bonus.

And the scripture on the nursery door, purposefully misinterpreted as it might have been, was just one more demonstration that a collective sense of humour was part of what The Met was about.

The Whites have continued in journalism. Today, much of Lorne's work is sports photography for the Kelowna Daily Courier.

For a few years, in the 80s, they ran a Christian Info Okanagan newspaper that had spun off from what is now BC Christian News.

The children are mostly grown now and there are nine grandchildren for the Whites to gently influence.

And Theresa is the spearhead behind the Okanagan Valley Pregnancy Care Centre, a place in downtown Kelowna where young mothers-to-be are gently encouraged to "love their children to life."

She still has a heart for journalism -- and a list of story contacts a mile long. So each month, she provides some "chasers". That is journalese for story possibilities for the reporters to "chase" each month, for Okanagan Outlook, the Okanagan insert in BC Christian News.

For me, as a Christian journalist who has spent the last 10 years in the capital, the Whites are a good story worth repeating occasionally. And it is encouraging that one of Ottawa's fine churches and two of its newspapers (albeit one now defunct) have helped shape -- and have been shaped by -- this good family.

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Lloyd Mackey is a member of the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery in Ottawa and author of Stephen Harper: The Case for Collaborative Governance (ECW Press, 2006). He can be reached at lmackey@canadianchristianity.com.

August 7/2008